


The Art of Repotting

by LambentLaments



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Navel-Gazing, So much navel gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 03:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20251501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LambentLaments/pseuds/LambentLaments
Summary: “Don’t pity me,” Cliff had said, but Larry did. Not nearly as much as he did himself, but the sentiment was still there.Larry is lonely, Cliff is desperate. Luckily, Negative spirit has a solution.





	1. The Small Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written after I found out Doom Patrol got renewed for season 2! Whoop Whoop! I’m here to spread the celebratory cheer with a little ole fic. 
> 
> I've read some of Morrison's stuff, but this fic is based solely on the show.

At this point, he’s running out of excuses. His justifications had validity the first couple months they settled back to the manor, when his aim was for two minutes, then three. But Negative Spirit has surpassed their expectations and can now travel on its own for four or five minutes after being ejected from Larry’s body.

He can feel a small thrum from his chest. Not unpleasant, but enough to get his attention. “Yeah, ‘eject’ sounds sort of crass. But that’s how it feels like to me, I told you.”

Another small thrum tells him that’s not what It meant. “Alright, just give me a minute.” The wind that blows throughout the field is somehow different from that near the manor, it’s coarse and less restrained as it hits his bandaged face. Larry closes his eyes. His body is tired, his lungs, especially complain with acute sharpness with each breath, but his mind feels clearer, the way it always does after his practices with ghost. Since it’s a good day, he’ll admit it’s reminiscent of flying.

It is going to be today; Larry tells himself once more. The ghost twinges, though in agreement at this decision or complaint at Larry’s dallying, he doesn’t know. Either way, Larry stands up to placate it.

Making his way to the manor, his resolution starts to waver almost immediately. Reaching Cliff’s room, Larry hesitates, unable to knock the door in front of him. “It’ll be fine,” he says, ostensibly at the ghost. This shouldn’t be this hard. They’ve seen each other at their worst. All the residents of this house have. There’s very little at this point to make them shun each other at this point. If purposely disfiguring them, berefting them of even a semblance of a normal life, and making them lose everyone they loved was forgivable (though that word was somewhat of a stretch), what Larry is about to propose pales by miles in comparison. 

It doesn’t feel so trivial, though.

“Larry?” Cliffe says from inside. “You talking to me?”

“Uh, yeah.” Larry pushes the door open.

Cliff’s race car tracks look complete. In fact, it was probably complete decades ago. But Cliff is always finding new ways to improve it. Once, in a heated yelling match, Jane said it was ‘a fake robot man’s fake little world’ and ‘a pathetic attempt at escapism’. It might have been Hammerhead, but it was probably Jane. She was nice like that. Maybe she has a point, but Larry doesn’t like to think so. It’s good to miss some things, much better than keeping everything down, trying to swallow vitriol every time anything reminded him of the past. John, the feeling of flying, his boys, he can finally miss them properly now, see those memories as something to cherish, instead of self-torture devices.

Larry and the rest of the manor’s inhabitants has often watched Cliff work. The room is less crowded than Larry’s school bus, less depressing than whatever Jane’s personality is up to, and infinitely more interesting than watching Vic tinker with his machines.

Larry settles into a spot by the window. “What do you think you’ll do when you finish this?”

“Build more, cuz house is way too big for the five of us. Seven of us,” Cliff corrects. “Thinking I should have picked a better hobby, like _horticulture_?

“It’s nice to see things grow.” Unlike us, he almost thinks, then stops because that’s not true anymore.

“Deep,” Cliff says in an amused voice.

Familiar silence descends upon them. Larry’s hands fidget, and he stuffs them into his coat pockets to stop. “Cliff,” he says, then continues without waiting for a reply. “Remember when we went to find Chief?”

“Which time?” Cliff says, jokingly, though there’s a sharp edge to his voice.

“The time we did find him. When we went to Danny the Street, and Flex Mentallo opened the portal?”

“Shit’s kinda heard to forget, isn’t it. Hope they’re doing well by the way. It’s been a few weeks since we heard back.”

“I’m sure they’re fine.” Larry very nearly backtracks at this point. But there’s a twinge in his chest that he’s not sure the source of. “Well, you know how Flex made us all come by mistake?”

“Yeah, I told you not to talk about that. Haha, metal man can’t feel anything. What’s new, right? Serves me right for fucking my way into this mess.” Cliff’s hands have stopped painting a H05PlTAL. 

“Negative spirit had an idea-, _we_ had an idea,” he corrects himself at Negative Spirit’s internal protest. “I think we could help out.”

“Oh, _help_? Help the poor tin can, huh?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Larry swallows. “This was a bad idea. Forget I said anything.” He rushes out the door.

“Larry- I’m sorry. Tutankhamun, my man, I’m sorry!” He can hear Cliff shouting as he closes the door behind him.

===

His dreams are different nowadays.

They’re still the same in spirit, being wet dreams born from decades of sexual frustration. Their realistic intimacy still hurt him in on a near physical level.

The difference is that those sorts of dreams no longer involve John Bowers. On the rare occasions he does dream of John, he has ceased to be 24 years old. When Larry thinks of him, which is often, it’s almost always John as Larry last saw him, sitting in his armchair, barely alive but the sardonic, tongue-in-cheek smile Larry loved so much still firmly in place, holding Larry’s hand and looking into his face like he doesn’t see the bandages,

In this dream, an incorporeal figure, or figures, push wet kisses on his neck and cheeks, and Larry forgets he doesn’t have proper lips anymore. The figure above him is heavy, the breathless way weight familiar and comfortable. They’re always somehow men, his entourage of delusions, despite never having identifiable features. They’re strong enough to hold him up, and when he’s panting, taking deep breaths, he smells sweat and male musk. A soft hand touches him between his legs, and Larry is smooth and sensitive there, unlike in the real world.

He wakes up to find a wet spot on his pants. “Dang it.”

He begins to get up to clean himself, only to stop as the events of yesterday crash back into him. “I’m taking a day off.” He informs Negative Spirit. “I deserve it. I took a big step yesterday.” It doesn’t seem to like that, but Larry is adamant. “You can go if you want to, but I’m staying here.”

“Larry!” A child’s voice carries from over the hall. “Larry you sleepyhead!”

Larry groans. He forgot, it’s pancake day.

“I’m tired, Babydoll.”

“Mummy Larry is a meanie!”

Larry sighs. “Where’s Rita?”

“But Rita’s pancakes suck!” an indignant gasp tells him that they’re both in front of his door.

“Dorothy says she wants one, too”

That’s enough of an incentive to get him to his feet.

Apparently, he promised chocolate pancakes. He doesn’t remember, but delivers anyway. Dorothy, Rita and Babydoll dig in with gusto.

“Excellent as always,” says Niles.

“Yeah, thanks,” Larry says, not looking at him.

The biggest reason Dorothy hasn’t been adjusting well to the manor is the strain of the squad’s relationship with Niles. They all try to accommodate her, but she’s too bright a child not to see the all the resentment simmering underneath. Her powers, already unstable to start with, fluctuates. On her worst days, he could almost see why Niles went to such great length to protect her. Almost.

“Dorothy’s have more chocolate chips!” Babydoll whines. Cliff picks up Larry’s fork to swipe a leftover pancake from his to Babydoll’s plate. Cliff looks at Larry as he does so. Larry stares intently at his breakfast.

“There we go,” Cliff says to Babydoll. “No fighting.” He picks up a bottle of chocolate syrup to squeeze out at least twice as much would be normally advisable. “Oops.” Babydoll looks delighted.

“We weren’t going to fight.” Dorothy says, in that quiet way of hers, simian mouth barely moving.

“Of course you weren’t,” Cliff says. “You’re such good girls.”

“And robot man isn’t scary!” Babydoll announces. “You’re funny.”

Everyone can see how much Cliff is gratified by this. It’s actually a little sad. 

“What’s so funny?”

“Your face!”

Cliff makes a tickling motion, not really touching the girl, just close enough to get his point across, but is awarded with a peal of laughter nonetheless. “Is not.”

“Is too.”

The repertoire goes on for some time. But then Babydoll flickers.

“Cute,” Jane says. “I thought you didn’t like anyone else in me but me.” Drinking in her share of a spluttering Cliff, she then glares at Niles, very pointedly removing herself from the dining table.

All the while, Dorothy is steadfastly eating her pancakes, paying no mind to losing her playmate for the day. Without Babydoll between them, there’s no physical barrier between Cliff and Larry. He can see the mechanical hulk trying to meet his eyes. Larry mumbles something about wanting to eat more comfortably and retreats to his room with his plate.

Larry thinks Cliff might follow him but to Cliff’s credit, he doesn’t, though Larry might wish a little bit that he had. Sitting on his bed, he removes a bit of his bandages and chews the pancakes very slowly, trying to taste them as much as possible. Niles told him, many years ago, that mucosa were especially vulnerable to burns. His mouth was spared, but his sense of smell would never properly recover. The relish with which the others ate the food he cooks sort of makes up for it. Cooking had been Niles’ suggestion as well. The last piece of pancake turns ashen in his mouth.

Then he tends to the plants in his room.

He’s done research to find out which plants are the least susceptible to radiation. The chosen ones in his room, he takes especially good care of. He trims, weeds, and waters with pointed care. At the end of it all he feels somewhat better. He’s decidedly not thinking of last evening, and he most definitely is not thinking of Cliff’s anger and disgust. There’s still a tightness to his chest, a familiar one that makes him want to throw his blinds up like he oft used to, but he breathes in and out, trying to ease it out.

“It’s not you,” he tells Negative Spirit. It’s begun to light up a bit. “And it’s not me, either,” Larry says, after a thought. “These things happen. I just- need a bit of time.” Lying down, he thinks about Cheryl at the hospital, taking the boys with her. He thinks about John on the porch, saying goodbye. The tightness alleviates, leaving only a numb throb like an old war wound.

Unbidden comes an overwhelming urge to go out to the fields. The ghost wants it as well, he thinks. But when he looks out the window, he sees it has started to rain.

Once again, his dream is sexual. He’s painfully aware it’s a dream. His senses are heighted to an unnatural degree until every feeling on his skin is shiner, fake.

There are knocks at the door. Larry jolts awake. As soon as he wakes, he can tell who’s come to see him. The sound is loud and brash.

“Cliff?”

“Hey. I just- can we talk?”

“It’s late,” he says tiredly. He concentrates, willing his arousal to go away.

“Yeah, sorry. I can come back tomorrow.” But Larry can’t hear him go away. “Just tell me you won’t be napping in there for like a week or something because of me.”

Larry’s been there. They’ve all been there. Cliff’s only taken an active interest so far when it’s Jane that’s throwing a temper tantrum, though. Apparently, looking pathetically desperate qualified you for a care pack. “I won’t.”

“I was feeling sorry for myself back there. You know how it is. I mean- fuck, I don’t mean it like that-“

“You don’t have to explain yourself. Let’s pretend I never said anything.” Larry turns around in his bed so that his back is to the door. “Just go,” he says. With an explosive burst of blue light, he loses consciousness.

When he wakes up, Cliff is taking to the air shower without protest. He looks ridiculously big coming out of the little cubicle.

“I thought we had an agreement,” he tells the ghost. It thrums. Larry hopes it’s an apology.

“You sure I can come in here, buddy? Your ghost sort of pushed me in.”

“…Sure.”

“So this is your turf,” Cliff says, looking around the room. “Nice place. You’re really sticking to the whole gardening shtick.

“I’ve been more active with the plants after Jane hijacked the garden.”

Watching the plants, Cliff steps closer to them. There’s a loud crack.

“Sorry,” Cliff says. He bends down, attempting to gather the broken pieces of the plate. As he does so, he knocks over one of the plants. “Shit. Fuck, I’m sorry.” He gives up trying to clean things up. “I guess I just break everything.”

Larry seriously considers letting Cliff spiral into the well-trodden path of self-loathing, then sighs. He doesn’t want another group therapy session, or worse, a private one. “Come here, Cliff”, he pats the space on the bed next to him. “It’s fine.”

The bed dips noticeably with a creak, and Larry wonders if he’s made a mistake inviting Cliff in. “Dorothy and Babydoll,” he says, deciding on a possibly uplifting subject. “you’re good with them.”

“Yeah, Babydoll’s warmed up to me since we’re see her so often nowadays, what with Dorothy being here and all. I was good with Clara when she was really young, when she was around whatever the age Babydoll’s supposed to be, I guess. I was a shitty ass dad later, but around that age, we got on pretty great.”

“I’m pretty sure you weren’t shitty.”

“Trust me, I was. I still am.”

“You’re probably a better father than I ever was.”

“You had a kid? Right, you had a kid. I almost forgot. How did that work? With you being gay and all.”

“Two boys. And it was a different time,” Larry says. He doesn’t try to mask the sharpness that colors his words.

“Right. I won’t pry.” Cliff what Larry presumes to be a zipping motion. He mostly looks like he’s pushing a fist across his face.

Larry sighs. “Look, about that. I know you’re straight. I’m sorry for… enforcing myself on you. It was a bad idea, and I understand why you acted badly.”

Cliff blinks. “Enforce? Fuck- what? Enforcing is- I dunno, shoving your hand down my pants or rubbing your butt on my leg when I’m holding my kid or something.”

“…That’s a bit worryingly specific.”

“That was the nanny. And other ones, too. But I wanted it then, too, so that wasn’t enforcing either. Dunno why I said that. Nah, you were offering to lend me a hand. Two guys messing around, I’ve done that stuff before. It was nice of you to offer.”

“You’ve done that stuff before,” Larry asks. It sounds more like a statement.

“I mean, like I said, I messed around. In high school before I dropped out, and with Bump and a couple guys after that.”

“So you’re not straight?”

“I was.” He tilts his head. “I mean I thought I was. Mostly because I fit the bill, really. Beer, cars, hot chicks throwing themselves at me, stuff like that.” Cliff shrugged. “Thing is, I stopped caring about that shit- man, woman, straight, gay, whatever, a long time ago. It’s hard to remember why I did. But to be honest, I don’t think I much cared even back before. I was down to fucking anything. I sound like such a man whore. But I guess I was fucked up like that.”

“I don’t think it’s fucked up. In fact, I think there’s a word for it.” Larry tries to remember the word and fails. He saw it in a pamphlet recently at Danny’s. It had a pink, yellow and blue color scheme. “Do you miss all that?”

“Honestly? I almost don’t remember how it all felt. Even the urge, it’s all,” he makes a hand gesture. “Poof. Nada. I do miss it though, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

Cliff sighs. “Yeah, again, sorry for being an asshole. I didn’t imagine you’d think I was being weird about you being gay. I was just being a mess like always. I do miss that shit a lot, you know.”

“Yeah. I do know.”

“But I do want to try it. Whatever you said.”

Cliff’s fingers start tapping at his thigh. The obvious display of nervousness is reversely calming Larry down. Cliff is so expressive despite having no movable facial muscles, Larry realizes that if whatever they’re going to do makes Cliff uncomfortable in any way, he would _know_. 

Larry rubs his chest. “Then let’s try it.”

Cliff stands up to walk toward the egress. Larry freezes, his heart clenching, but then he realizes Cliff has only gone to lock the door. “So how do we do this?” Cliff says, settling back to the edge of the bed.

“Before we start, I have to tell you, it might not work. I’ve never done this before-“

“No kidding?” Cliff laughs.

“Just, think of whatever might get you… hot. Wanna lie down?”

“I don’t think your bed would fit me,” Cliff says. Red electronic lights signal he’s closed his eyes.

Larry gives him a few minutes. Just when he’s about to summon the ghost, Cliff sighs. “It’s no use.”

“We can stop if you want.”

“No, I meant getting myself a mental boner or something. It’s not gonna work.”

“You could… take off your clothes?”

“That’s weird. And pointless. What I mean is, sex is hormones from your dick or whatever. I got neither. I can’t fake it. The thoughts are in my brain, but the sexy times aren’t.”

“Everything happens in the brain, every feeling, every input. Your body may receive the senses, but it’s your brain that actually feels them. At least, that’s what you told me.”

“That’s what _Chief_ told me. I’m not sure I trust anything he says anymore.” He says somewhat petulantly.

Larry sighs. “Look, do you want to have mind sex or not.” Larry surprises himself. He hadn’t once thought of this as sex.

“All right, please continue.” Cliff makes a show of his stretching his non-existent muscles. Mind sex, he mutters as he takes his clothes off.

Larry has never realized what a hassle Cliff went through to disrobe. The pants are comparably easy to step out off, but his shirt gets repeatedly stuck on his head. “Fuck.” Cliff says, clearly mortified.

Larry helps him pull the shirt over the particularly cumbersome bolts around his head. It’s intimate, or at least it feels that way to him. Considering how rarely Larry got to see a fully naked John, as so many of their rendezvous’ mostly happened outdoors, this might actually not be that surprising. Cliff, however, is still embarrassed. “Just, do whatever you were going to do.”

“Tell me any time you’re ready.”

Cliff shrugs and says “Ready.”

Larry closes his eyes and concentrates. There it is, the familiar knot that he releases with a tug.

A tightness of his chest, gyrating inwards, radiating towards the abdomen in small clutches, growing in tension with each repeated breath until his whole corpus is enmeshed in a warmth that spreads; higher, fiercer, his body too small a prison against the building pressure, an unstoppable force pushes out from under his solar plexus, reaching outwards and outwards and then… release! Out from his body a bright light- then darkness.


	2. The Greater Life

Through blurry eyes, Larry sees Cliff laid unmoving about like a broken automaton. His torso has fallen backwards on the bed so that his head dangles lifelessly over the opposite edge.

Alarmed, Larry leans to pat him on the shoulder. “Cliff? Are you okay? Dang it. Cliff?”

Slowly, the red blinking lights turn on. “Fuck,” Cliff says.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I know you think I’m an idiot, but I can count, you know.”

“I figured your brain got fried or something.”

“Sounds delicious,” Cliff says. Despite his efforts at nonchalance, Larry can tell he’s rattled.

“So, how was it?” Suddenly nervous, Larry studies him.

“It was-“

“Yeah?”

“Pretty extreme.” “It was- fuck, that was out of the charts.”

Larry smiles in spite of himself, stretching his bandages. “Yeah?”

“I just- I didn’t expect that.” Cliff pats Larry’s knee. “Thanks. It was nice of you to do this.”

Larry starts to move aside to give Cliff room to get up. As he moves, he realizes he’s hard.

He looks to Cliff, and he can tell he’s noticed. “I’m sorry. It’s not something I can control.” He removes himself from Cliff, sitting upright as he did before, trying his best to hide his bulge from Cliff’s view.

“Who can?”

“I mean… When the negative spirit leaves, I’m not just left in the dark, you know. I get… images. Memories, dreams. I don’t really control what I see.”

“What did you dream about?”

“Good stuff, bad stuff, stuff I wish would’ve happened or wish wouldn’t have.”

“I meant- what did you just dream about?”

“Men, I suppose,” he says after a pause. “Touching me.” He shrugs, despite it being too late for nonchalance.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Cliff getting up, and his hand reaching out towards Larry’s thigh. The heavy mechanical hand touches him with exaggerated weariness. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“Right.” The hand disappears with much more swiftness.

Larry hesitates. Cliff sounds so unthinkably bitter.

“It wouldn’t work anyway. I’d probably hurt you or something.”

“How would you hurt me?”

“Who’d want to look at this ugly mug when they come anyway.” Cliff trying to play it off as a joke is even more painful.

Larry sighs. “I think we’ve long since established that it would be incredibly hypocritical for me to think that. You can touch me if you want. I just didn’t think you’d want to.”

“I want to pay you back. And I want to see you.”

“My body looks like an angry meat loaf. And you can’t possibly expect me to take off the bandages.”

“Um, why not? It’s not like anything could happen to this” He pats his metal chest.

“Unless Chief somehow put ten inch plates in there,” Larry says, lightly touching Cliff’s head. “Let’s not risk brain cancer.”

“Oh. I never thought of that.” Cliff cocks his head. “Doesn’t matter. I still want to see you get off.”

“Touch me, then,” Larry says after a pause, completely surprising himself. He decides to commit before he can spook himself out, and so quickly removes his pants.

Only when he sits down again, does he consider how his haste could be confused for eagerness.

Even when Cliff is at his gentlest, his movements are erratic and stiff. His touches are more like grating pushes. Larry gasps.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s okay. You surprised me, that’s all. It doesn’t hurt, the fire burned off a lot of the finer nerve endings,” Larry explains.

Cliff doesn’t seem assured. Larry sighs. “Look, then let’s just-“ He moves to straddle Cliff’s left thigh. He holds on to Cliff’s shoulders, keeping them at arm’s length. “You can see me now.”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you want to see me?” Larry asks as he starts to grind. Cliff is room-temperature, perhaps a little colder. The metal feels less smooth that he would have thought. Larry has never moved against something so solid, the feeling is strange, and it stops him from reaching climax, which is just as well since he was so close as he was waking.

“I like watching people move. You’re so graceful. You all are.”

“I’m not graceful.”

“You’re so light on your feet,” he says. “It’s okay to look,” he says with sudden ferocity. “it’s okay to miss things.”

“Of course.” There are ridges on Cliff’s legs, like everywhere else. One of them keeps chafing on him. He finds that it creates an extra beat to his solo rhythm.

“Larry?”

“Yes?”

“Who are they? The guys you see in your dream.”

“No one. Anyone.”

Cliff tentatively puts his hands on Larry’s hips. He is just barely touching, and he might just as well be feeling the movement alone and not Larry himself. Larry finds himself watching the shadows cast on hollows of the metal body, under the brows, under the chins and arms, and closes his eyes, but only because Cliff wouldn’t be able to see that he did.

“What happens there?”

“They touch me. Hold me. Before, during.” Inspired, Larry leans so that his chest touches Cliff’s shoulder, and wraps his arms around the neck. He hides his face in the nook of his own arm. Cliff mirrors this by hugging him, effectively caging him in. With this, Larry’s movements are much more limited. He’s forced to nearly bounce downwards. He tries to imagine sex with John, at first choosing one of the times when John had held him like this in the pickup truck, but so many components of the scene are missing, he decides not to drag it in for comparison, lest the present become insipid in contrast. He dispels the residual smell of gasoline and heady sweat, the lingering softness of John’s lips as he kissed his ear.

“They hold me. Kiss me. Lick me.” He sighs, gripping the metal with his thighs, grinding into it. “Fuck me.”

Moving as if on command, Cliff’s knees jerk up, and Larry comes, body spasming. He holds the pillar in his arms in a vice-like grip, knowing Cliff cannot feel it, wishing he could.

Larry stays unmoving for minutes afterwards, frozen in lethargy, bandages unpleasantly sticky with sweat.

“Thanks,” Cliff says. Something in his voice makes Larry study his face. There is nothing there, of course. “Thanks,” Cliff says again, and Larry can tell he means it. With sudden chagrin, he finds himself wishing he hadn’t closed his eyes, or imagined things from a lifetime ago.

Larry helps Cliff get dressed. It’s no less frustrating than getting them off. At least he hides his embarrassment this time, and lets Larry help him with his shirt. He’s an anachronism, too, really. Built in reminiscence of the big machines, big buildings and cars of the 90s. Bigger the better, only if because small isn’t available yet.

“Next time you want to do this again, just knock.” Larry leans on the headboard, watching Cliff carefully work his belt.

“Yeah, thanks. I will.”

Larry stills at the hesitance in Cliff’s voice. The negative spirit, returned to its nesting space in Larry’s chest, aches in a slow rhythm, slower and slower until Larry can no longer feel it. “If you _don’t_ want to do this again, I understand,” Larry says gently. He thinks he means it.

“I want to. Fuck-no, I want to,” Cliff says. “I loved watching you. Watching shouldn’t be enough, but sometimes-, it kinda is. Touching you, that was good, too.”

Cliff rubs his fingers nervously. The tick makes Larry think of Cliff yesterday in his room, painstakingly holding the little machines, just to make them run.

“But having the ghost in my brain, no, I don’t think so. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, because I am, but you don’t have to do that for me again.”

“I thought you said it felt good.”

“I said it was off the charts,” he says apologetically. “I meant it. It’s just so fucking over the top. And it doesn’t feel like sex, really, just a shit ton of pleasure and a bit of pain. I still can’t feel my body, it’s dissociative for me.”

“Must have been pretty weird, yeah.”

Cliff starts laughing. “Oh, nothing,” he says at Larry staring at him. “I imagined human me- past me, trying to understand all this. But the weirdness, that’s okay. The weirdness is honestly the best thing about what we did.“ He was quiet for a while. “I don’t think I want an orgasm. I don’t think I need to feel sex.”

Larry nods. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Thanks for helping me realize it. Otherwise I think I might have pined.”

“But you said you wanted to watch me again next time.”

“That’s the point. There’s nothing I want to do. But I like seeing you want stuff, the same way I like watching you all eat and drink or whatever.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Depends.”

“Do you think you’ll ever stop wanting all the other stuff, too? Eating, drinking, being more graceful?”

“I try not to think about that,” Cliff says quietly. “I owe you one, Larry,” He ignores Larry’s cry of protest. “So I’ll tell you a secret, not that anyone wants to know.” He snorts. “Do you know what scares me the most? Maybe I don’t miss the human stuff as much as I say I do. Maybe I’m just telling myself I do, because not wanting those things will mean not even the small remaining lump of me is human anymore.”

“I don’t think those basal stuff is what makes us human. Not that I’d know.” He looks down at the bandages covering his legs. He gives his toes a little wriggle. Sometimes, looking down at himself, he’d feel uncertain as to whether he imagined all of it, the human flesh and bones underneath the processed cloths. Perhaps one day he’d unwrap himself to find something else entirely, or even nothing at all. “Maybe they’re a small part of it, but that can’t be all there is, can’t it?”

“I like to think so, too.” Cliff stands up and pats Larry on the back. After the night’s transpirations, the gesture seems comically casual. “Good night, Larry.”

“Good night, Cliff. Next time?”

“Next time.”

===

Larry loves Rita. He really does. More than anyone else in the world, really. And so he will never relay to another person what he realized long ago. Rita isn’t a good actress.

No, scratch that thought. She is a good actress. Because acting skills isn’t what makes an actress successful, not really. She has the flair and cunning and ambition to be one. Or at least she did, and it was more than enough. But acting skills, that was a different matter altogether.

It might be truer to say that her acting isn’t exactly bad bad, but it is certainly outdated, like pretty much everything in the manor. Her acting worked in an age when people were more used to stage productions, and the cameras weren’t always on focus. It helped to be conscious of the audience, to dramatize your emotions with a bit of flair.

Right now, sitting at the breakfast table, helping herself to a mountain of bacon and eggs, the emotion Rita was conveying screamed nonchalance.

Larry wants a little bit to curdle up and die.

It’ll be okay, though. They won’t talk about it. Maybe 50 years from now the two of them will be watching one of Rita’s movies, and at one of the more risqué scenes where someone kisses a girl’s neck or something, Rita will be reminded of this day and say something non criticizing and supportive, to which Larry will accept her acceptance gratefully in silence. And they will never talk about it ever again. He knows how it’ll work out, the predictability is one of Larry’s favorite things about Rita.

It’s also his least favorite thing about Jane.

Jane often doesn’t eat with them, especially breakfast, but here she is now, gracing the halls with her presence, apparently with the sole purpose of standing in the doorway to stare daggers at Niles. Jane has a system going on where she either completely ignores the man or actively invites him to a fight, with no option between.

Today, Niles doesn’t give her one. “Dorothy, would you like to show me your painting from yesterday again? I thought it was wonderful,” he says. He exits with his daughter’s hand in his. A human shield, Larry thinks, disgusting himself.

Jane waits until the two are out of sight to sit down and stuff her mouth with eggs. With a mouth full of whites, she asks, “So how did you guys fuck?”

A moment passes where Rita is apparently under the delusion that smiling awkwardly at the frozen atmosphere might help things. “Now, Jane.”

“It’s none of your business-“

“We didn’t.”

It’s Cliff who says the latter. Larry stares at Cliff. He sounds so… angry? No, panicked. Last night, he’d been a bit apprehensive that Cliff might let things slip, he wasn’t the most subtle of people, but to deny things outright, while looking so desperately at Jane, Larry would never have imagined it.

The negative spirit thrums in his heart. It grinds away at the wall of his chest. Larry has to look down to make sure he isn’t lighting up.

No, last night wasn’t wrong, what they did was good. _I’m not_ _wrong_, he thinks with such intensity he thinks the ghost might hear it.

“We didn’t,” Cliff says again. Looking so intently at Jane Larry thinks he might bore holes into her.

“Hey, scrap metal. I don’t care,” she rolls her eyes at her bacon. She sighs, then meets Cliff’s eyes. “Really,” she says, much more softly. “I don’t care. It’s fine.”

Larry decides to leave the two to talk it out. Like he said, he doesn’t want another group therapy session. As he studies his garden, Rita comes to join him.

“Hey,” he says, quickly busying himself with wiping down a leaf. “How are they?”

“They’ve started shouting at each other.”

“You don’t say?”

“But Jane hasn’t run shut herself in her room yet. I actually think they’re working some stuff out.”

“I really should be used to how much baggage they all have by now,” Larry says drily.

Rita snorts. “We’re one to talk.”

The rain from yesterday has taken its toll on the garden. Some of the sedums are uprooted. He kneels in the soft ground and decides they couldn’t be saved. It’s a mistake he made often as he was just starting out horticulture. He kept trying to restore unsalvageable plants, when he should have planted new ones in its place. The pachira growing in a flower broken pot nearby, however, is flourishing.

“How did you know?’ he asks.

Rita coughed uncomfortably. “Cliff was… loud. Jane and I actually got up to see if something was wrong, but the sound was coming from your room.”

“Jesus.”

“I made sure Jane didn’t stay to eavesdrop.”

“Jane got up? How loud was he?”

“You didn’t hear him?”

“I was unconscious,” Larry admitted.

“Oh,” Rita sounds curious, but doesn’t pry.

It’s quick work to replant the pachira where the sedums were. He pats the dirt one last time. “It’s probably a bad idea to get back inside, right?”

“I think enjoying the outdoors might be preferable at the moment.”

It’s true. The air itself is dewy, and the morning sun hits the trees in just a way that makes one want to either snap a picture or wander towards them. “Rita, are your shoes good for a walk in the field? I thought I might show you the work I’ve done with the negative spirit.”

“As a lady, lower heels should be good for most anything.” Larry offers her his arm and she daintily puts her hand on the crook.

Slowly, they make their way down the winding path leading them away from the manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gardening analogy made me cringe a little bit, but I still like it.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't understand why this fandom is so small. It has so much potential? The character arcs are awesome? Doom Patrol fans, pls say hi in the comments. Or you can visit me on Tumblr, cuz i want to follow more DP blogs. (Username lambentlaments)


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